Pandemic Learning Video Series

COVID-19 took teachers by surprise, and school systems had to scramble to find online solutions. With a speed they hadn’t matched during simpler times, entire school districts trained their teachers in new approaches to education.

• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/10/us/covid-19-seattle-washington-home-schooling-remote.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/education/learning/coronavirus-teachers-students-remote-learning.html

Over the course of the pandemic, teachers and school administrators developed new ways of handling their circumstances. After the initial wave of surprise and uncertainty, there was an opportunity to re-examine education in Minnesota through a new lens.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/virtual-learning-challenges.html

While students and their families juggled the strange experience of at-home distance learning, teachers bore the strain of dealing with the pandemic personally while being forced to find new ways to do their jobs. Making it through required shifting priorities on both sides of the classroom.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/opinion/remote-learning-failure.html

• https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/teachers-across-the-country-worry-about-a-rush-to-reopen-schools

Much of what is taken for granted in traditional classroom education had to be rethought during the pandemic.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/coronavirus-immigrants-school.html

Even before the pandemic, the gap in technology access between students and school districts was amplifying historic inequalities in education. The challenges posed by COVID-19 further highlighted the severity of this issue, while offering some opportunities to spread awareness and tackle it more directly.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/learning/the-digital-divide-researching-the-challenges-of-online-learning-for-many-students.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/us/coronavirus-public-private-school.html

As schools transition back to classroom learning, many teachers are reflecting on how to utilise the insights from this past year of non-traditional learning. While some will be grateful for the return to normal, others have a new appreciation for the flexibility of online learning.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/technology/remote-learning-online-school.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/nyregion/coronavirus-students-schools.html

Years of research into best practices for online learning were often supplanted during the pandemic by the fastest practices. Emergency remote teaching has been required at times throughout history and requires an efficiency that doesn’t highlight the greatest strengths of a more deliberate online model.

• https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning